


dawn in the fields (snow and dirty rain)

by orphan_account



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: M/M, headcanon explosion, other background characters I guess, really vague sexual content
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-30
Updated: 2014-08-30
Packaged: 2018-02-15 09:34:20
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2224137
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the dust settled and the world had steadied, there was a life to be lived. And it was never going to be perfect, and a part of it was always going to hurt, but it's the best they’ve got.</p>
            </blockquote>





	dawn in the fields (snow and dirty rain)

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first work for Captain America: The Winter Soldier, which messed me up in so many ways. I don't usually write like this, so it's a little weird, but I think I like it.
> 
> Oh. And Richard Siken is to blame for at least 35% of this fic. He also messed me up.

The sunlight peeked through the space between the curtain and the windowsill; it traveled across the room and landed on a metal limb, glinting off the silver and into the man’s eyes. He frowned, groaned a little, shifted in the sheets, and finally peeled his eyes open. They blinked at the room, and then opened fully. He pushed himself up onto an elbow, curled his left arm into the space his body was leaving, and sat up.

The space behind him was empty. The curtains were still drawn, but there was enough light in the room for him to make out a scribbled blue _out running_ on the whiteboard they had tacked onto the back of the door. He frowned at it, and then glanced down at the small radio-alarm clock they kept on the night table on his side of the bed. It said 7:14 in red light, glowing faintly in the still-dark room.

He sighed through his nose and fell back onto the bed, using his left arm to pull the covers over his head. He closed his eyes and burrowed back into the warm spot his own body had made during the night.

*

It wasn’t that they weren’t Avengers anymore. They were always going to be Avengers; it came with being _superhuman_. But the Tower was getting crowded, the team had expanded, and things had settled, both out in the world and in their own minds. It was time for a change, for both of them. They weren’t the same people they had been one hundred years ago. They never would be.

So, they had packed up all their belongings, including certain items the Smithsonian and other museums had collected and hoarded over the years that they wanted back, and the many items they had collected during their five years of living in the Tower. They enlisted Pepper’s help and had a charity auction for all the things they didn’t require anymore, and raised thousands for World War II vets. Then they climbed into a truck they rented for the occasion and drove to the small house they had bought with the excess of money their lives had granted them.

They moved in. They settled down. They found things to do that allowed them the flexibility that being part of the Avengers required.

They lived as well as they were able to. Which is to say, about as well as any other real person.

*

He kept his guns in the basement. He wished he felt secure enough, brave enough to get rid of them, but the truth was that he needed them within reach. They stayed in a large storage room, something Steve guessed the original owners had used for food, which was locked with a Stark original security system that only unlocked for Steve or Bucky’s thumbprint. Once a month, he disappeared into the basement with a bundle of rags and cleaning solution and sat on the floor, taking each gun apart and checking it for wear and repairing what needed to be, and cleaning what was looking dusty and dirty.

He would return before supper – before because Steve would delay it by an hour or two, depending on the expression on Bucky’s face when he came up for a drink or bathroom break – and quietly eat. They were not what most would define as ‘good days’, these days where he cleaned his guns. He kept to himself, leaving the house to go for a walk around the neighborhood, leaving Steve to clean up after them, to sit and watch the news by himself, to double-check on tomorrow’s obligations.

When he was ready, he would come home and sit on the window-seat of the living room and stare up at the sky, ignoring Steve as he puttered about. He curled his legs up to his chest and rested his chin on them, breathing quietly. Steve would sometimes stretch out on the couch after putting the TV on mute, and sketch. Sometimes he would read, pages turning too fast and lips curled down slightly in concentration.

Finally, whenever the first yawn escaped Steve’s mouth, he would stretch his arms and legs out, then climb to his feet. He wouldn’t say anything, just look over at Bucky for a long moment before leaving the room. Bucky would sit still and close his eyes, listening to the sounds of Steve getting ready for bed: the slide of drawers, the rustle of fabric, the faucet running while he brushed his teeth, the beep of the alarm clock as he set it. He would open his eyes again once Steve had settled down.

And when, finally, Steve heard the door creak open, he would roll his shoulder and keep his eyes closed. He would listen as Bucky undressed, as he pulled the covers down, as he settled his weight down into the bed. He would exhale when he felt the cool metal of his left arm settle over whatever part Steve had left exposed. He would smile and mumble, “G’night, jerk.”

The next day was always a ‘good day’.  
*

They got visitors. Of course they got visitors; Steve had made a point of introducing himself to their neighbors, and to pre-emptively apologize for any violence and/or drama that their presence may bring to the area.

(Sidenote: It didn’t happen as often as they had thought it might.)

The other Avengers would pop by on occasion, and also the families of the Howling Commandos were always welcome (as long as they phoned first. Neither man handled surprise guests as well as people might have thought). Bucky also had a tendency to go online shopping on those nights when he couldn’t sleep, and so packages were often delivered to their house, to the amusement of Steve.

He never minded, especially since the vast majority of the orders were for him; Bucky shrugged every time Steve asked, and said, “I’ve spent my entire life trying to keep you safe and happy. Ain’t gonna stop now.”

Visitors would come inside the house, and look around. They smiled at the photographs that were framed along the hall (a Bucky hobby), and they chuckled quietly at the old phonograph in the corner of the living room, and the lack of a 3D television screen. Then they would glance at the ashtray sitting quietly on a shelf by the door to the back porch. They would look at Bucky and nod knowingly.

Bucky and Steve didn’t correct them. It made sense that they would believe that Bucky was the smoker – it was fashionable in the 40’s, and obviously Steve’s health condition wouldn’t have allowed him to smoke anything beyond asthma cigarettes. But the truth was, Steve was the smoker.

Not often, and never inside the house. Only on the bad days, only on the days where Bucky disappeared inside his mind, or Steve fell victim to his own memories. But Steve had begun smoking long ago, years before he had crashed that plane into the ice. He had started after Dr. Erskine’s death, after Bucky had been sent out to the front.

He’d always wanted to try it; Bucky had always looked so cool doing it; he had pages of sketches of smoke curling around a lazy Bucky’s head. So, after everything, once the tours had started, he had gone out and got himself a pack of Bucky’s favourites. And then he’d smoked them.

At first, they made him cough something fierce, but the smell reminded him of Bucky, of the only family he really had left. So he kept at it; one of the girls – a sweet one named Marilynn who sent half of the money back home to her sister – taught him the best way to inhale and how to breath out in the sexiest manner. He got good at it.

Then, once he’d joined the war, once Bucky and him were side by side again with the Commandos surrounding them, smoking was just the thing to do. It was part of their rations, and very sociable. Dum-Dum liked his cigars, and could blow circles out of his mouth. Whenever Bucky felt like everything was just getting too much, he would find Steve, slap him on the chest and say, “Bum me one,” and Steve would hand over his half-empty pack.

Then came their falls.

Barton was the one who had gaped when Steve had asked for a smoke; apparently, in the future, everything was switched. Steve had been quickly shown the long, _long_ list of health concerns that were associated with cigarettes, and as he’d blinked and frowned at the list, everyone seemed to believe that was the end of it.

Until one day, Nick Fury had caught up to him in a hall and said, “Something wrong, Captain?”

And Steve had stammered, and glanced away, and finally said, “Look, no offence, Director, but do you know where’d I get a smoke?”

Because, ultimately, the health concerns did not bother him. Nor was there any chance of him getting addicted to them. What he had missed were the memories attached to them, the memories of a young, slightly concerned Bucky, of a group of men bound by war and honor, of a time that he no longer belonged to.

And if people gave him odd looks for it, of Captain America enjoying a smoke, then he would keep it to the privacy of his own house.

The Winter Soldier, on the other hand, had no reason to smoke. No opportunity, and no memory of ever enjoying it. And even after Steve found him, even after he slowly regained memories of a James Buchanan Barnes, he still couldn’t bring himself to smoke. That pastime had belonged to a different version of him; as real but as old as Steve’s skinny version.

So now, in the 21st Century, Bucky would sometimes find the back door open a crack, and the smell of cigarettes coming through on the air. He would wrinkle his nose, not because of the smell as much as what the smell meant; and he would walk over, open the door, and find Steve, leaning over the railing and staring up at the skies, a cigarette burning away in his fingers. He’d wander over, touch Steve’s shoulder with his human hand and say, “Rogers?”

And Steve would hum, not really in the world yet, so Bucky would hop up on the railing next to Steve’s arms, and rest his hip against Steve’s arm. And he’d watch Steve stare out into the distance and habitually raise one hand to take a smoke. Then, right before it was short enough to burn him, Bucky would reach out and pluck the cigarette out of Steve’s fingers and whisper, “Enough, Steve. Time to come home.”

And slowly, slowly, Steve’s eyes would come alive again and rest on Bucky’s face.

*

Steve was the only one who called Bucky, well, Bucky.

To the majority of people, he was Barnes. That was how he introduced himself, from the time he began to regain his memories to the current time. It had taken Steve an admittedly _long_ time to catch on; at first he always introduced Bucky to people _for_ Bucky. And, at first, that was fine – a relief, actually. Bucky was not too good with people for the longest time.

But, eventually, he took a stand. He started interrupting Steve before things became set in stone. And, after the third time, Steve asked him why, and Bucky told him: because he wasn’t Bucky any longer. He could never be that person again. He was someone new – a new man altogether.

(This had, of course, led to Steve asking, haltingly with cheeks flushed and eyes shifty, whether this meant that he didn’t want _Steve_ to call him Bucky either; to which he had answered, “Don’t be an eegit, Rogers, I don’t expect you to stop now. Ya’ can’t teach an old dog new tricks, right?”)

So, now most people knew them as, “Steve Rogers, ma’am, nice to meet you;” and, “James Barnes, but I don’t respond to the first.”

And when people heard Steve call out for Bucky the first time, they would look questioningly at Bucky, who would shrug and say, “He’s such a romantic; he wanted to make sure our names rhymed. Didn’t ya’, Stevie?” he would call over his shoulder.

To which Steve would always respond with, “I’m sorry, I don’t respond to diminutives of my name.” Which would further escalate into the all-too common banter of ‘pet’ names they had for one another.

It was something people learned to accept.

*

There were… the bad days.

Bucky’s came in cycles: he deflated inside, like a helium balloon, slowly over the course of days. Slowly, he would grow quiet and sullen; choosing to stay inside and stare at the television over going outside as he usually would. He would sleep less, wander the house like the ghost he used to be, fade off into his own thoughts in the middle of a conversation. In the early days, he would keep busy and find dozens of little things to keep the hollowing vacuum in his mind silent; at the peak of the cycle, he would spend hours just staring into space.

The cycles were never the same: the shortest was three days – one day of flittering about in taciturn silence, one day of vacant eyes and numb limbs, and a final day of Russian mutters and fidgeting digits – the longest almost three weeks long. Sometimes he went months without falling into another one – the record was four – and sometimes he would slip into another one almost as soon as he escaped. Each one was different; each one bruised Steve’s heart.

Steve’s bad days came without warning and were categorized by hours of silence or minutes of blankness. They rarely lasted very long, and splattered the calendar like raindrops on an umbrella. Sometimes they were as simple as him being caught up in a memory, body still as a statue and eyes far away and glassy. Sometimes they were hours of him wandering the rooms, fiddling with little things, and sighing to himself. Sometimes, he would leave the house, wander a city he had known through two coats of paint.

Many times, their bad days overlapped; the cloud swirling around Bucky’s head often triggered Steve’s own wave of guilt and longing and lost. Sometimes one of them was aware enough to drag them to the Avengers’ Tower, or to ask for a friend to visit them. But most of the time, they just buried themselves deep in their home and waited it out much like they used to wait out Steve’s bouts of illness.

*

They kept their relationship private.

It wasn’t exactly that they hid it: Steve had loved Bucky for so long, he didn’t know how not to; and most of their friends knew that, ultimately, it was Bucky’s love for Steve that gave him the incentive to break through seventy years of programming. But it was just that they weren’t the type to project their relationship.

Whether or not it was because of their upbringing or their personalities would be impossible to deduce, simply because their upbringings _developed_ their personalities. And although they knocked shoulders or slung arms over shoulders or punched each other or kicked at shins, and although they had a dozen ‘pet’ names for each other (mostly insults), none of these signs of affection could definitively define them as a couple.

But once the people were gone and the lights were dimmed and the house settled, and if it was a good day (or even a decent one), one of them would curl into the other on the couch. Sometimes it was Steve, nostalgic for a body he had discarded long ago, curling around Bucky’s good arm and stealing the remote from Bucky’s obsession with the cooking channel. Sometimes it was Bucky, exhausted from a day of being normal, resting his head on Steve’s lap and letting him pet his hair while the figure on the screen whispered.

Sometimes they wrestled for the remote. Sometimes they compromised and watched movies. Sometimes they fell onto the floor with their mouths attached and limbs twisting together. Sometimes Steve pulled away, laughing slightly with relief and naked happiness, gasping out, “Bedroom; c’mon, Buck-”. Sometimes, Bucky panted and glared and took his hand, letting himself be pulled away.

Sometimes Bucky smirked and dug his fingers into the band of Steve’s sweatpants and pulled them off with a, “No time for that now, Rogers.”

Sometimes Bucky swallowed Steve down until Steve’s fingers yanked at his hair and he came with a shout. Sometimes Steve wrapped a hand around Bucky and whispered things like, “Did you ever imagine skinny ole’ me doing this to ya’? Imagine my thin, bony hands wrapped tight around you; bet I’d have to use both of them, wouldn’t I? Wouldn’t feel anything like this now, would it have?”

Sometimes, Bucky used his metal hand. Sometimes he used his human hand. Sometimes Steve grew impatient and used his hands instead, either on himself or on Bucky. Sometimes Bucky needed to take control; sometimes he needed to give it up. Sometimes Steve needed to take control; sometimes he needed to give it up. Sometimes it was hard and fast; sometimes it was slow and gentle.

But, _always_ , when it was over, and they were sated, they would look at each other, and Steve would slide his fingers between Bucky’s metal fingers and say something soft like, “Hey, handsome.”

And Bucky would let out a soft sigh and say something like, “Hey.”

Steve would smile and turn onto his side, run his free fingers over Bucky’s torso, sliding up to his face and say, “Gosh, Buck, don’t you ever shut up?”

Bucky would grunt, grab that moving hand, and say, “Shut yer’ yap, Rogers,” before kissing it. Then he’d close his eyes and say, “Not that you’ve ever done it before.”

“You like my mouth,” Steve would whisper, before leaning down to kiss Bucky, slow and thorough. Then he’d raise his head and said, “We still going, Buck?”

And Bucky would blink his eyes open and smile slightly and say, “Yeah, kid. We’re still going.”

*

The clock changed over from 8:06 to 8:07, and the door to the bedroom creaked open. He stepped inside and shut it gently behind him, reaching out for the whiteboard eraser hung from a string, and rubbing out the blue words. Then he gently let it fall, catching it to make sure it didn’t hit the door. He turned, reaching around to peel off his sweaty shirt, dropping it softly in the laundry hamper by the desk, and reaching down to tug off his jogging pants. He reached down to grab them and dropped them in the same hamper.

He walked over to the bed, smiling at the body curled deep inside the covers. He knelt down on the bed, feeling the mattress give way, and watched as the body tensed immediately after. He said clearly, “Good morning, lazybones.”

The other man released a breath and muttered, “Buzz off, Rogers,” before curling deeper into the sheets.

Steve grinned and crawled closer, leaning over and moving sideways to straddle Bucky. He lowered his head and butted it against Bucky’s dark hair, muttering, “Rise and shine, handsome.”

Bucky growled and knocked Steve’s head away with a quick toss of his head. “ _Nyet_ ,” he grumbled.

“I’ll make coffee,” Steve said, running his nose over whatever part of Bucky’s head he could find. “And waffles. Boiled eggs if you want ‘em.”

Bucky grunted.

Steve kissed Bucky’s jawline, pushing the sheet down with his own chin. “Might even be persuaded to cook naked…” he said quietly, voice innocent.

Bucky peeked open one eye. “And give the neighbors a show?” He moved very quickly, turning onto his back and wrapping a metal hand around the back of Steve’s neck. “No thanks, buddy. I’ll pass on that.”

Steve shrugged, content to just look at Bucky’s face. “Your loss, pal.” He tilted his head to one side, staring at the sleepy look in Bucky’s eyes. “Any nightmares?”

Bucky stretched, toes curling and chest rising. Something cracked softly, and the sound made Steve’s lips quirk. “Nope. Dream free night.” He cocked his head to one side, and moved his metal hand around to cup Steve’s cheek. “Bet you can’t say the same though.”

Steve shrugged again. “Wasn’t a terrible one. Just left over from the mission last week.”

Bucky scowled. “Damn terrorists. Why don’t ya’ just let the army handle those kinda things?”

Steve huffed out a breath and a smile and leaned down to rub noses with Bucky. “You gonna shower while I cook?”

Bucky raised both hands and ran them over Steve’s back. “You gonna cuddle up with me on the couch afterwards?”

“If that’s what you want,” Steve said, lifting his head just enough to look straight into Bucky’s eyes.

“That’s what I want, Steve,” Bucky said quietly.

Steve smiled, eyes brightening. “Then, yeah. I’ll cuddle with ya’, Buck.”

“Good,” Bucky said softly, lips finally curling up into a smile. “’Bout time.”

*

“We can do anything. It’s not because  
our hearts are large, they’re not, it’s what we  
struggle with.”  
-Richard Siken, “Snow and Dirty Rain”

**Author's Note:**

> So. Apparently this is a thing now… So if you wanna find me, I tend to lurk at my tumblr: rockymountainurn.


End file.
